First Ladies For Dummies. Marcus A. Stadelmann, PhD

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      President Adams never enthusiastically enforced the first three acts, but he and his party used the Sedition Act to send reporters, newspaper publishers, and even a Congressman critical of him, his political party, and his family to jail.

      When Jefferson became president, he repealed the Naturalization Act — the other acts expired in the early years of Jefferson’s presidency.

      HOW THE WHITE HOUSE BECAME THE WHITE HOUSE

      The story of the presidential mansions is an interesting one. The first president and his wife, George and Martha Washington, lived in two private houses consecutively in New York City, the country’s first capital. The two buildings they lived in were just called the Executive Mansion. George and Martha Washington lived in these two houses from 1789 until December of 1790, when the capital was temporarily moved to Philadelphia. Martha and her husband now rented a mansion owned by the wealthy merchant Robert Morris until 1797. This new residence was referred to as the President’s House. The residence in Philadelphia was supposed to be temporary until a new executive mansion could be built in the new capital of Washington, D.C. The new executive building was ready to be occupied by 1800 and then President John Adams moved in. After the building was finished, the sandstone walls were whitewashed giving the house its familiar white color. Quickly, people started calling the building informally the white house.

However, the name Executive Mansion became the official name until President Theodore Roosevelt changed the name to the White House in 1901.

      Moving to and hating Washington, D.C.

      In 1800, the new presidential building in the new capital of Washington, D.C., was ready, and Abigail had to make the move from Philadelphia. She oversaw the move from the president’s mansion in Philadelphia to the presidential mansion in Washington, D.C. She disliked the new and still unfinished building and hated the humidity in Washington, D.C., which aggravated her rheumatoid arthritis. In a letter Abigail refers to Washington, D.C., as one of the “very dirtiest hole I ever saw for a place of any trade or respectability of inhabitants.” She could not wait to leave Washington, D.C., and was not too upset that John lost reelection to Thomas Jefferson in 1800.

      Living out her life

      After John Adams’s term as president ended, the couple moved back to Quincy, Massachusetts, and lived there the next 17 years together.

      However, tragedy struck the Adams family repeatedly in the period from 1800 to 1817. Three of Abigail’s children died by 1817 and so did all of her sisters. In 1818, Abigail contracted typhoid fever at the age of 73. She died at home on October 28, a few weeks before her 74th birthday.

Abigail Adams was so beloved in Massachusetts that her pallbearers included the governor of Massachusetts and the president of Harvard University.

      

Abigail’s son and future president John Quincy Adams wrote the following about his mother: “My mother’s life gave the lie to every libel on her sex that was ever written.”

      Becoming famous after her death

      Abigail Adams left us letters, so we have a good record of her life. She actually provided the best record of a woman’s role during the American Revolution and the early years of the U.S. government. Her letters, covering the period of 1762 until 1801, were published by her grandson in 1840 and became a bestseller. Her collected letters actually went into four editions in the 1840s alone and are still available for purchase today.

      Charles Francis Adams, her grandson, summed up her life best, writing,

      She was a farmer cultivating the land and discussing the weather and the crops; a merchant reporting prices current and the rates of exchange and directing the making up of invoices, a politician speculating upon the probabilities of war, and a mother … and in all she appeared equally well.

Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson (1748–1782)

Martha Wayles (see Figure 4-2) was born on October 19, 1748, in Charles City County, Virginia. Nicknamed “Patty” by her parents, she grew up wealthy. Her parents, Martha Eppes Wayles and John Wayles, were prominent figures in Virginia’s society. Martha was educated by private tutors and studied literature, dance, and French. Her father was an attorney and prominent slave trader who owned several plantations.

      At the young age of 18, Martha married Bathurst Skelton, an attorney, who died within two years of them being married. Being a widow at the age of 20, she was courted by many young gentlemen, including Thomas Jefferson, who was also an attorney. They met while Thomas was serving in the Virginia House of Burgesses, Virginia’s colonial legislative assembly. Martha lived only a few blocks away in the house she had inherited from her husband. By the time they met, Martha had not only become a widow but also recently lost her only child.

      Source: C-Span / National Cable Satellite Corporation / Public Domain

      FIGURE 4-2: Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson decided to pursue Martha with what she loved most: music. They played music together and sang songs, and Thomas even gave her a piano as a gift. Martha fell in love with Thomas while they played music together. She played the harpsichord, and he played the violin.

      The two got married on January 1, 1772, and then the couple moved to Thomas’s estate called Monticello, which he had designed himself. When Martha married Thomas, the future president received a plantation and a large number of enslaved people as part of her dowry. After Martha’s father’s death in 1773, Thomas received even more property, including enslaved people, so he then owned 187 enslaved people, making him the second largest slave owner in Virginia.

      

Among the enslaved people Thomas received when marrying Martha was his future mistress, Sally Hemings, who was fathered by Martha’s father, John Wayles.

      

According to colonial law, a widowed woman’s property automatically became the property of her new husband.

      The next 10 years proved to be hectic. Thomas Jefferson was involved in the American Revolution, being a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1776 and writing the Declaration of Independence the same year. In 1779, he was elected the governor of Virginia. Martha became the First Lady of Virginia.

      

Martha started brewing her own beer while married to Thomas Jefferson, producing 170 gallons in the first year alone.

      Dying too soon

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